Newtown Review of Books has reviewed The Stars Askew.

Newtown Review of Books has reviewed The Stars Askew:

The Stars Askew continues Australian fantasy author Rjurik Davidson’s dark tale of revolution, treachery and personal sacrifice begun in his debut novel Unwrapped Sky.

Again, this story is set in the richly imagined city of Caeli Amur where magical beasts, grinding totalitarianism, revolutionary fervour and warped thaumaturgists blend together to create a fantastical landscape. And once again its vision is imperturbably dark.

The revolution may have been won. The workers may have cast off the repressive hand of the ruling Houses, but the insurgents must now come to terms with making their dreams a reality. Ruling, it seems, is not so easy as wanting to rule.

In fact, the book opens with the murder of one of the revolutionary leaders, leaving Kata, the morally compromised House Technis thief-turned-revolutionary, to forge an uneasy alliance with Rikard of the hard-line ‘vigilant’ movement in order to find the murderer. But is the killer a House assassin or one of the revolution’s own? Meanwhile, the thaumaturgist Maximillian, joined with the essence of the dead god Aya, is engaged in an existential struggle for control of his own body, just as Armand, the factotum of ill-fated House Technis Officiate Boris Autec, flees the city with a very special item.